The other half of the email I sent a moment ago:
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Again, just some observations; overall, the experience is wonderful.
First boot: no problems; looks great. Maybe should offer to auto-login new user.
GDM: for my encrypted harddrive use-case: I just entered my password to unlock the HDD, why do I have to enter it again to log in?
Fonts: LCD panel wasn't detected for sub-pixel rendering; fonts are blurry by default. Overall font quality is poor in contrast to default install of competitors' distros.
Nit-pick: bash-completion isn't installed by default.
Printing: Preferences > Default Printer and Administration > Printing is confusing. Perhaps renaming Preferences to User Settings and Administration to Administrator Settings would clarify.
Video codecs: no offer or mention of RPMfusion in contrast to competitors' distros. (fails the apple.com/trailers test)
Flash: Not offered to install in contrast to competitors' distros. (Only tried 64-bit Ubuntu as comparison here.)
On Tue, 2009-11-17 at 22:22 -0600, Jason D. Clinton wrote:
Video codecs: no offer or mention of RPMfusion in contrast to competitors' distros. (fails the apple.com/trailers test)
Just replying to this one for now. The Fedora project cannot actually mention RPMFusion outside of how https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/OtherRepositories is worded due to the type of content carried at RPMFusion and it's legality within the United States of America. Since Red Hat is a US headquartered company, and RHT has legal responsibility over Fedora, Fedora needs to abide by US law. It is unfortunate, but contributory infringement is a nasty issue to deal with :/
On Tue, 2009-11-17 at 20:27 -0800, Jesse Keating wrote:
On Tue, 2009-11-17 at 22:22 -0600, Jason D. Clinton wrote:
Video codecs: no offer or mention of RPMfusion in contrast to competitors' distros. (fails the apple.com/trailers test)
Just replying to this one for now. The Fedora project cannot actually mention RPMFusion outside of how https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/OtherRepositories is worded due to the type of content carried at RPMFusion and it's legality within the United States of America. Since Red Hat is a US headquartered company, and RHT has legal responsibility over Fedora, Fedora needs to abide by US law. It is unfortunate, but contributory infringement is a nasty issue to deal with :/
also, it would arguably be against the Fedora project's goals even if we legally-speaking _could_. Fedora is not about convenient access to proprietary software for short-term benefit. Fedora prefers to encourage the use of free / open source / unencumbered alternatives. I don't think it would fit with the Fedora project's goals to offer proprietary drivers, codecs or extensions such as Flash even if we had the legal okay to do it.
free-yet-patent-encumbered codecs are a bit of a grey area, granted. I'm not sure how the Fedora philosophy covers those.
2009/11/18, Jason D. Clinton me@jasonclinton.com:
Flash: Not offered to install in contrast to competitors' distros. (Only tried 64-bit Ubuntu as comparison here.)
A rpm is downloadable at adobe's page, even a repo config rpm... Btw, don't compare it with ubuntu. you have to enable multiverse and universe for flash. These are not official repos and the usage is on own risk. The of borderline main and universe/multiverse is like Fedora/3rd Party Repo...
My biggest Problem is that Nudoka, the theme that makes Fedora special, like human for Ubuntu, isn't default any more... It's a hard change and a marketing fail, because everytime you saw a blue nudoka window, you know "This is Fedora"!
On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 5:22 AM, Jason D. Clinton me@jasonclinton.com wrote:
Fonts: LCD panel wasn't detected for sub-pixel rendering; fonts are blurry by default. Overall font quality is poor in contrast to default install of competitors' distros.
Now, that the nasty patents expired we should be able to get better looking fonts in F13.
I should ping bedhad to do that.
On Wed, 2009-11-18 at 07:41 +0100, drago01 wrote:
On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 5:22 AM, Jason D. Clinton me@jasonclinton.com wrote:
Fonts: LCD panel wasn't detected for sub-pixel rendering; fonts are blurry by default. Overall font quality is poor in contrast to default install of competitors' distros.
Now, that the nasty patents expired we should be able to get better looking fonts in F13.
I should ping bedhad to do that.
'Nicer' is subjective. I don't actually like the patented rendering, I prefer the non-patented. The above isn't actually referring to the patented stuff, anyway - just whether subpixel hinting is enabled by default. I think it's a sensible idea; surely LCD displays are sufficiently widely used by now that we could default to subpixel hinting in the GNOME font configuration, and that would be the best choice for the majority of users?
On Wed, 2009-11-18 at 00:37 -0800, Adam Williamson wrote:
On Wed, 2009-11-18 at 07:41 +0100, drago01 wrote:
On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 5:22 AM, Jason D. Clinton me@jasonclinton.com wrote:
Fonts: LCD panel wasn't detected for sub-pixel rendering; fonts are blurry by default. Overall font quality is poor in contrast to default install of competitors' distros.
Now, that the nasty patents expired we should be able to get better looking fonts in F13.
I should ping bedhad to do that.
'Nicer' is subjective. I don't actually like the patented rendering, I prefer the non-patented. The above isn't actually referring to the patented stuff, anyway - just whether subpixel hinting is enabled by default. I think it's a sensible idea; surely LCD displays are sufficiently widely used by now that we could default to subpixel hinting in the GNOME font configuration, and that would be the best choice for the majority of users?
This is probably worthwhile, though I'd like to get it right for the inevitable day when some other display technology displaces LCDs too. RANDR and KMS have this information though; we could just look at the subpixel properties of the connected outputs.
- ajax
On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 2:37 AM, Adam Williamson awilliam@redhat.comwrote:
On Wed, 2009-11-18 at 07:41 +0100, drago01 wrote:
On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 5:22 AM, Jason D. Clinton me@jasonclinton.com
wrote:
Fonts: LCD panel wasn't detected for sub-pixel rendering; fonts are
blurry
by default. Overall font quality is poor in contrast to default install
of
competitors' distros.
Now, that the nasty patents expired we should be able to get better looking fonts in F13.
I should ping bedhad to do that.
'Nicer' is subjective. I don't actually like the patented rendering, I prefer the non-patented. The above isn't actually referring to the patented stuff, anyway - just whether subpixel hinting is enabled by default.
While I did mention the not-default sub-pixel, in fact, all the fonts look poorer in contrast to other distributions even when comparing sub-pixel to sub-pixel. And while font weighting can be quite subjective as you mention, the font hinting and kerning for the default desktop UI is just algorithmicly wrong. Look at "About this Computer" in the System menu. "b" has a giant loop while the adjacent "o" is 3/4's of b's width. There are, of course, examples all over the place of these hinting issues. In some cases, vertical lines fail to weight to an integer position resulting one side or the other having additional aliasing. Some fonts appear to be affected by this shortcoming more than others.
On Wed, 2009-11-18 at 10:26 -0600, Jason D. Clinton wrote:
While I did mention the not-default sub-pixel, in fact, all the fonts look poorer in contrast to other distributions even when comparing sub-pixel to sub-pixel. And while font weighting can be quite subjective as you mention, the font hinting and kerning for the default desktop UI is just algorithmicly wrong. Look at "About this Computer" in the System menu. "b" has a giant loop while the adjacent "o" is 3/4's of b's width. There are, of course, examples all over the place of these hinting issues. In some cases, vertical lines fail to weight to an integer position resulting one side or the other having additional aliasing. Some fonts appear to be affected by this shortcoming more than others.
I can't argue with that as I don't have a default-configuration reference handy, but I'm using stock Fedora freetype - not freeworld - and my fonts don't look like that:
http://www.happyassassin.net/extras/fonts.png
that's using subpixel smoothing, full hinting, 96dpi resolution (which is actually 'wrong' for my screen, but oh well) and RGB subpixel ordering (varies by monitor, of course).
On 18/11/2009, Adam Williamson awilliam@redhat.com wrote:
On Wed, 2009-11-18 at 10:26 -0600, Jason D. Clinton wrote:
While I did mention the not-default sub-pixel, in fact, all the fonts look poorer in contrast to other distributions even when comparing sub-pixel to sub-pixel. And while font weighting can be quite subjective as you mention, the font hinting and kerning for the default desktop UI is just algorithmicly wrong. Look at "About this Computer" in the System menu. "b" has a giant loop while the adjacent "o" is 3/4's of b's width. There are, of course, examples all over the place of these hinting issues. In some cases, vertical lines fail to weight to an integer position resulting one side or the other having additional aliasing. Some fonts appear to be affected by this shortcoming more than others.
I can't argue with that as I don't have a default-configuration reference handy, but I'm using stock Fedora freetype - not freeworld - and my fonts don't look like that:
http://www.happyassassin.net/extras/fonts.png
that's using subpixel smoothing, full hinting, 96dpi resolution (which is actually 'wrong' for my screen, but oh well) and RGB subpixel ordering (varies by monitor, of course).
But the default for F12 isn't that. It's grayscale smoothing, slight hinting, 96 dpi, RGB order. In the past the default was medium hinting.
The new default looks a lot like Mac OS X. Whether people "like" it is a matter of the fonts in use and taste/visual acuity.
Rui
On Wed, 2009-11-18 at 18:04 +0000, Rui Tiago Cação Matos wrote:
The new default looks a lot like Mac OS X. Whether people "like" it is a matter of the fonts in use and taste/visual acuity.
which is what I said in the first place. however, if the defaults lead to objectively incorrect rendering as described by Jason on common hardware, we should at least reconsider revising them again.
desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org
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Adam Jackson -
Adam Williamson -
drago01 -
Jason D. Clinton -
Jesse Keating -
Josephine Tannhäuser -
Rui Tiago Cação Matos